Los Alamitos High graduate and UC Berkeley grad student Kathryn Moore was recently back in southern California as part of a design team that was among six international finalists in the Disney ImagiNations design competition.
Los Alamitos High graduate and UC Berkeley grad student Kathryn Moore was recently back in southern California as part of a design team that was among six international finalists in the Disney ImagiNations design competition.
Moore, who goes by “Katie,” was part of a team from Berkeley that designed a Sustainable Automated Meal Mobile (SAMM-E) for the competition. Their design landed them among the finalists and her team was invited to Disney’s Walt Disney Imagineering studios in Glendale for a week of design seminars and networking with professionals and even interviewing for potential paid internships. But the big prize for young students like Moore, was the experience of seeing how a major company like Disney works the creative process.
“What we’ve done here has really been amazing,” Moore said during a phone interview.
Moore is working on her fifth year master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Berkeley. She was a lifetime student in the Los Alamitos Unified School District, having attended Lee Elementary, Oak Middle School and Los Al High.
At Berkeley she teamed with a friend, Andrew Lin, a bio engineer. The two had entered the competition last year, so they were both familiar with the process. They sought out a designer and through mutual friends found Tiffany Yuan.
The three of them came up with the concept of the SAMM-E, which they intended to be a re-inventing of a typical food truck. SAMM-E was described by the team as follows:
SAMM-E (Sustainable Automated Meal Mobile – Earth Class) is an interactive guest experience that immerses guests in the world of WALL-E. Guests interact with SAMM-E and other robots to create their own, completely customizable meals out of organic, locally grown ingredients. SAMM-E himself showcases the human’s newfound lifestyle. With solar panels on his back and his passenger side garden, SAMM-E makes sure to stay sustainable. Because he is mobile, SAMM-E also has the capabilities of traveling throughout the Bay Area and beyond, reaching communities outside of Berkeley. In re-imagineering the typical food truck, we plan on giving guests an interactive, informative and, of course, tasty Disney experience.
The team entered the contest, but knew the competition would be exceptional. They first got the word that they had made the semifinals, which was shocking for the team, Moore said. But then getting notified that they had made the top six and would be invited to the Imagineering studio was beyond belief.
“We were beside ourselves,” Moore said.
Moore said she learned more than she might have expected, not only from the organization but from the other five finalist teams. She hopes to one day go into design and analysis, focusing on analyzing new designs and project management. Though she is still up in the air as to exactly what role she might want to play in the process.
Going into her college career, Moore was a physics major but soon moved into mechanical engineering.
“I knew I wanted to go into the sciences,” Moore said.
She was a part of the Los Alamitos High tennis team through graduation in 2008. Her week-long experience in Glendale kept her busy, but she hopes to get back to Los Alamitos for her spring break. She returns home to visit her family and friends but also noted that she has to get chili-cheese fries from Paul’s Restaurant whenever she comes home.